It’s impossible to know what the analysts and soothsayers in the Kremlin were telling Russian President Vladimir Putin in the lead up to 24 February last year, but his supreme confidence in victory if he invaded Ukraine has had similarly catastrophic consequences.

Over the past year, his forces have left a trail of destruction throughout the neighbouring country, murdering, torturing and humiliating the civilians they were supposedly sent there to protect, looting homes and razing entire cities into rubble.

But, at the same time, the Russian army has crumbled under the pressure of having to fight an actual war against Western weaponry, rather than simply parading up and down Red Square. Endemic corruption, it turned out, has left its hardware in a sorry state and its once-dreaded elite units were repeatedly sent into kill zones by incompetent commanders, unprepared for the invasion and unable to challenge orders from on high.

The motivation for the atrocities was always clear. Putin has long bemoaned the fall of the brutal Soviet Union in which he grew up and, at the age of 70, was evidently running out of time to complete his lifelong project of returning Russia to superpower status. Without the resource-rich industrial regions of Ukraine, that was never really possible – and the fact it had, from 2014 onwards, chosen a different, more democratic, pro-Western path was a challenge to the entire system of corruption, repression and nostalgia that he had presided over.

In the minds of the Kremlin advisors who told their President the Ukrainian army would collapse within hours of a massive Russian onslaught, Kyiv’s liberty and self-determination was simply part of a Western ploy to divide the two historically-linked nations. Nobody would die for Ukraine, they thought, when being Ukrainian was an invented label designed to drive a wedge between two historically unified people. They were obviously wrong. Instead, the divides that post-independence Ukraine did have over language, politics and identity have been pushed to the side in the face of a threat to the country’s very existence.

Even relatively pro-Russian mayors have put aside their differences with Kyiv and taken up arms to defend their homes against Moscow’s aggression. President Volodymyr Zelensky has overnight gone from being just another politician fighting domestic battles to a global symbol of liberty and resistance. The army has been buoyed by Western weaponry, advanced training and by the determination that comes with being forced to fight for survival. Despite the tragedies unfolding daily on its soil, Ukraine has never been in a stronger position in modern history.

Russia, meanwhile, has descended into chaos. While Putin’s rule had long eroded the foundations of the modern democratic state, the past year has taken things to a new level entirely. Where once there was a restricted but flourishing group of independent media outlets holding the government to account, there is now nothing but arrests, emigrating journalists and orders for outlets to be closed. Among opposition politicians, it is clear that the dissent that was previously tolerated is now enough to see them hounded out of office and jailed.

The war, Putin said, was against fascism and Nazism. But Russia’s schools now dress up children as soldiers, wearing cardboard boxes painted like tanks and planes, singing songs about how “Donbass is ours and god is with us.” The ominous pro-war Z symbol is daubed on buildings and billboards. Nobody knows where it came from, but many are willing to go along with it in the name of patriotism – an almost perfect metaphor for how many Russians have come to think about a war that few ever thought would happen.

Whereas once the prospect of Russia without Putin was relatively easy to comprehend, it is now impossible to imagine a future where the system of personal control he has installed is handed over peacefully. At the same time though, the likelihood that Putin will find himself on the wrong side of infighting and opportunism grows with every day that the so-called special military operation flounders.

Much as how the fall of the Soviet Union reduced Russia to ruin and sparked national soul searching – one that sowed the seeds for the Kremlin’s imperialism today – the end of Putin’s rule, as inevitable as it is, is likely to plunge the country into chaos. While a year of war has cost the lives of thousands of talented and brave young Ukrainians, the victory that they gave everything for will cement their country’s future. Across the border though, a generation of Russians might soon be living through the same uncertainty, poverty and repression that Putin had promised to lift their parents’ generation out of.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

Now though, it appears the incident could be less of a curiosity and more of a window into a covert intelligence-gathering battle between Washington and Beijing. On Monday, the Pentagon confirmed it had shot down more unidentified flying objects in American airspace. At a press briefing, General Glen VanHerck, who oversees air defences across the northern United States said that a fourth “octagonal” device been downed near to military sites in Michigan.

While VanHerck was careful not to describe the trio as “flying objects” and said officials haven’t ruled out even “extraterrestrial” origins, analysts and media outlets have gone into overdrive speculating that a string of Chinese spy balloons have now been intercepted.

Surveillance balloons of this type are notoriously difficult to detect because they are relatively small, fly at high altitudes and the inert gas that keeps them buoyant is hard to pick up on radar. In fact, the first balloon was actually spotted by civilians on a nearby airplane, starting a race to work out what was soaring above the clouds. The US is now accusing China of using them as part of a large-scale reconnaissance programme that Secretary of State Antony Blinken says “has violated the sovereignty of countries across five continents.”

At the same time, officials hinted there had been detections of spy balloons in previous years, including several during the tenure of former US President Donald Trump. However, Keith Kellog, who served on the National Security Council during that administration, says the issue “never came up” and that “if it did happen under President Trump and he was not told, that’s more than just egregious, that’s a dereliction of duty.”

Over the past few days there have been reports of balloon sightings further afield, with one spotted above Venezuela and Costa Rica. Colombia’s air force later confirmed it had detected “an object above 55,000 feet in altitude, which entered Colombian airspace in the north of the country, with characteristics similar to those of a balloon.” It was left to chart its course, and the Chinese embassy in Costa Rica later issued an apology for the incident.

China has access to a massive network of more than 260 surveillance satellites that it could use to image continental North America and, until recently, balloons were seen as obsolete technology. One American defence official said that such flights would have “limited additive value from an intelligence collection perspective.” However, a number of analysts now believe they can be used to extend surveillance capabilities, interact with digital infrastructure and provide more constant data flows compared to orbiting satellites.

“We collect intelligence on China from bases all around their east coast, in Japan, Guam and Australia. We fly P-8 [surveillance] flights on a daily basis and the Chinese can’t do that,” Bonnie Glaser, a China analyst at the German Marshall Fund told The Guardian. “It looks to me like they have gotten creative in finding a way to collect information that they think probably provides them with some insights into US capabilities and possibly vulnerabilities.”

Initially, Beijing denied any involvement, claiming the first incident was simply down to a weather probe that had been blown off course. Now though, the rhetoric is changing. Speaking to reporters on Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin alleged that the US itself had flown high-altitude balloons over his country almost a dozen times. “The first thing the US needs to do is change its ways and reflect on itself, and not to smear and incite confrontation,” he said, defending Beijing’s ploy without actually admitting to it.

Now, the world is waking up to a potential new theatre opening up in a simmering conflict between China and the West, with balloons seemingly set to play a major role. With the FBI analysing the wreckage of the first one shot down, there are major questions to be answered about what information they might be collecting, and how long they might have been looking down from the skies.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

More than a thousand people are believed to have died and many more are injured after one of the strongest earthquakes on record hit southern Turkey and parts of northern Syria in the early hours of Monday morning, levelling entire neighbourhoods and sending rescue workers racing to free those trapped under the rubble.

The epicentre is believed to be close to the Turkish city of Gaziantep, where videos shared on social media show scenes of total devastation – collapsed buildings and shattered streets lit up only by the glow of sirens and emergency searchlights. The historic Gaziantep Castle, which has stood for more than 2,000 years, partially collapsed amid the tremors, which came in at a magnitude of 7.8, putting the earthquake among the top 20 worst seismic events in recorded history.

However, the effects have been felt far further afield and 912 people have already been reported dead across seven provinces of southern and eastern Turkey. In nearby Syria, authorities report 237 fatalities, but estimates are complicated by the fact that the government of Bashar al-Assad has only a patchy hold on the area, where Turkish-backed rebels and Kurdish fighters have been battling for control since the start of the Civil War in 2011.

Likewise, the affected region of southern Turkey includes a number of majority-Kurdish cities, such as Diyarbekir, where security forces have clashed with both ISIS and members of banned separatist groups in recent years. In 2016, much of the Sur district of Diyarbekir was leveled as the proscribed Kurdistan Workers’ Party fought running skirmishes with the police, and rebuilding efforts had been ongoing. There have long been concerns around construction standards, given the proximity to a nearby seismic fault line. Footage from the scene on Monday, however, shows residential buildings collapsing and critical infrastructure destroyed.

The carnage wrought by the earthquake across the area, much of which has already been battered by conflict in recent years, has sparked fears of another humanitarian crisis. Worse still, the area has been facing heavy rains, snowfall and strong winds, further hindering efforts to house and shelter those affected. “Most people are sheltering outside for more than six hours now in zero degrees and permanent rain,” Sven Gerst, a German national living in the city of Gaziantep says, sharing a picture of a group huddling around a fire on a snow-lined street. “Buildings have visible damage and remain unsafe to enter.”

“We woke up at 4.17am because the shaking was so intense,” he tells Reaction. “I’ve experienced many earthquakes before, but this was different – it was like being in an airplane that’s going through turbulence. We had sixty seconds of tremors, but it felt like an eternity – you heard things falling in the kitchen, glasses smashing, people screaming. Then, afterwards, there was no information on where to go, where to gather. Ultimately people just got in their cars and drove as far as they could because their homes aren’t safe.”

A number of foreign heads of state have offered their condolences and pledged to provide assistance to Turkey if requested. “My thoughts are with the people of Türkiye and Syria this morning, particularly with those first responders working so valiantly to save those trapped by the earthquake,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

“We are watching with dismay,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a statement. “The death toll keeps rising. We mourn with the relatives and fear for those buried. Germany will of course send help.”

Responding to the news, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the earthquake was the worst since 1939, when a similar size event killed almost 33,000 around the city of Erzincan. “Search and rescue teams were immediately dispatched to the areas affected. Our Ministry of Interior and Health, local governors and all other institutions started their work rapidly. We hope that we will get through this disaster together as soon as possible and with the least damage possible.”

Now though, experts are warning that aftershocks and even secondary quakes could be on the cards. “We are facing the biggest earthquake we have seen in 24 years in this region. So far, 100 aftershocks have occurred. 53 of them are greater than magnitude four. Seven of them are above magnitude five. We know these earthquakes will continue in the coming days.”

Watching sternly over his shoulder was the grey spectre of Boris Yeltsin, the puffy-eyed, heavy-drinking Soviet bruiser who had stood aside for a peaceful transition of power, the first in hundreds of years of Russian history. The message was clear. The days of despotic Tsars, of brutal Bolsheviks and of uncaring, faceless Communist bureaucrats were over – and something new was taking its place.

Few, though, could have been eyeing the ascendent President more closely than those in the West. After decades locked behind the Iron Curtain and on the tail of just a few years of chaotic, corrupt, casino capitalism, the idea that the world’s largest country might be on the verge of becoming “normal” was tremendously appealing to politicians and potential investors. Cleaning up the state, bringing law and order, and avoiding the mistakes of the past were all on the agenda for Putin, and foreign capital and foreign capitals would be there to help him do it. This was a man to be taken seriously.

Fast forward a quarter of a century and it’s impossible to imagine the veteran Russian president, himself now puffy-eyed and visibly run down, standing in the back and watching a successor take the reins. Whatever bright green shoots of democracy had started to poke through in the early years of his time in office have now been trampled down and, after years of playing the role of the stable, cautious, diplomatic leader, Putin has decided to stake his entire record on a bloody and ill-considered attempt to conquer Ukraine.

On Thursday, he took a rare audience with the public he insists is on his side, sitting awkwardly on a chair – a good few meters away from the tiny crowd of “patriotic youth groups” – at an exhibition of Second World War memorabilia. Russia, he said, is once again facing a German-led onslaught from the West, fighting those who are ideological heirs to Hitler. “The most important thing,” when it comes to wars, Putin told the assembled group of uniformed young people, “is the truth. And credibility! It’s our most important weapon.”

But that, of course, isn’t quite what he said. Instead, while the embattled president was trying to conjure up the near-mythical spirit of what Russians call “the Great Patriotic War” for which millions of their grandparents and great grandparents gave their lives, he insisted still on calling his misadventure in Eastern Europe a “special military operation.”

How can an existential battle for the future of the country, against the forces of the West that apparently want to destroy it, not be a war but an operation? And why would the state punish people with fines and imprisonment for suggesting otherwise? Why would Moscow, if it were facing an unholy crusade from European countries, still sell oil, gas and electricity to them? And if every inch of land occupied in Ukraine is part of an ancient homeland that has to be protected at all costs, why has the Kremlin stopped drafting young conscripts to go and fight over it?

These are questions it seems Putin has no answers for, and none of the members of his media entourage are going to push him for the truth. His narrative has become so patently ridiculous, so divorced from reality, that it’s hard not to conclude that, despite his protestations otherwise, he has given up on maintaining credibility abroad.

Bragging that Moscow still has “many friends” overseas, he neglected to mention that hopes of unlimited support from Asian nations like China and India have fallen flat. Beijing has consistently refused to be sucked into talk of a global war between East and West, and the country’s diplomats have repeatedly issued veiled warnings that talk of an existential battle are dangerous and wrong. New Delhi has gone as far as to openly push for peace. Besides a few conspiratorial rogue states, and a handful of African nations, Russia’s own version of imperialism dressed up as anti-imperialism has failed to win friends and influence people.

In the West, Putin has lost all of his purchase. Having threatened to freeze Europe by cutting off energy supplies, the continent called his bluff and has now almost totally divested from Moscow’s oil and gas. Apocalyptic predictions of a winter crisis by and large fell short, and it’s hard to see what leverage he now has left. Russian state media is banned in most Western nations, its companies and banks are shut out of the financial markets, and its exports are being replaced. Putin’s diplomats are effective pariahs, stuck talking to countries like Turkey, where they’re greeted with smiles and handshakes but leave without securing any concessions, while Ankara continues to send military equipment and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. If credibility is their secret weapon, the Russian arsenals are bare.

Now, many Russians are also realising that Putin doesn’t have a monopoly on the truth. “The fact he keeps calling it a special operation is such a joke,” says one junior official in Moscow. “He won’t ever admit he misjudged it, even though things have changed so much. He can’t admit he’s wrong.”

In a now-viral video published by German broadcaster DW last week, Moscow residents were stopped in the street and asked whether they supported Berlin’s decision to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. “I very much welcome it because I want a Ukrainian victory,” says one young man. “If the tanks help in solving the issue,” one middle-aged Russian woman says, “then great. The conflict must be ended.” At least two of the interviewees are now under investigation.

In the Soviet era, in the days of the Second World War, Putin’s predecessors had an iron-clad grip on the “truth” they wanted their people to see. Control over the media, over the education system and the instruments of the state was more than enough to write history in the way they saw fit. But, today, with information freely available, beamed onto mobile phones through Telegram and other social apps from opposition channels, and with banned sites easily accessed via VPN, it’s far harder to dictate what reality really is. Russians, by and large, know their country is at war – and if the Kremlin is lying about that, what else is it lying about?

While many young people have fled overseas, and many more will never risk seeing the inside of a police station to make their opposition to the conflict heard, there are deep rumblings within Russian society. Their President was once seen as an immutable source of power, capable of bringing together oligarchs, generals, rival warlords and silencing the opposition. Losing his authority is unlikely to not have consequences for long, and those competing forces could easily be unleashed once again.

As Russia doubles down on its invasion, pushing yet more conscripts and prisoners onto the frontlines, the government’s reputation at home and abroad has rarely been in such a precarious place. Putin is right to see “truth” and “credibility” as the best weapons available in a war – but somewhere in his mind is surely the realisation that he is losing that battle as well.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

More than two decades on, Merkel’s 16 years as her country’s Chancellor have come to an end. So too has any illusion that the Iron Curtain dividing Europe is a thing of the past. And yet, the special relationship she cultivated between Berlin and the Kremlin has been much harder to shake. Despite its outward commitment to supporting “European values” and stability on the continent, Germany has consistently been one of the most reluctant Western nations when it comes to support for Ukraine.

In January last year, just weeks before a far less fresh-faced Putin gave the order for the tanks to start rolling, Kyiv was pushing its Western partners to provide it with weaponry and military equipment to deter – or help counter – an invasion. A procession of cargo planes soon touched down, bringing anti-armour missiles and launchers, crates of bullets and other hardware from countries like the US, UK and Poland. Germany, however, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of arms and ammunition, offered only to send 5,000 helmets to a nation looking down the barrel at an existential conflict. Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, said the move was a “joke” and left him “speechless.”

Since then, as those defending Ukraine defied the odds and thwarted Putin’s imperialist ambitions, the deliveries have only picked up pace and the country has received more than £100bn in aid over the past 11 months. Germany has emerged as the fourth largest donor, behind the US, EU institutions and the UK. And yet, there continues to be a red line that Berlin is hesitant to cross.

In April last year, even as news was surfacing of the wholesale murder of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha, Merkel’s successor Olaf Scholz held out against plans in Brussels to impose a total embargo on Russian natural gas exports. “We would inflict more damage on ourselves than on them,” his finance minister, Christian Lindner told European counterparts. Weeks later, the government signed off on plans to let energy companies pay for supplies in rubles, helping Moscow to circumvent banking sanctions. Ultimately, the decision was undercut by Putin’s efforts to choke the continent off from fossil fuels against its will, restricting the flow of gas through the pipelines under its control.

Now though, a new row over military hardware has again rocked the EU. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has repeatedly called on Western nations to step up arms exports to help his country push back against an increasingly fierce and increasingly desperate Russian offensive in the east. At the top of the wish list are main battle tanks to replace its Soviet-era fleet and take on Moscow’s heavy armour at a distance. “Ukraine will struggle to mount a second counteroffensive without a heavier force,” Anthony King, a professor of war studies at Warwick University told POLITICO last week, arguing that Russian troops were fighting at longer range to avoid being blown apart by Western artillery.

Despite that, there has been deadlock over the move which, in some quarters, is seen as an escalation in the war. Britain, however, helped break the impasse earlier this month, offering to dispatch 14 Challenger 2 tanks, while France said it would make available a number of AMX 10-RC light combat tanks. Against that backdrop, though, Germany has reportedly vetoed efforts in other European countries to send the Leopard 2. Poland and Spain had voiced intentions to hand over the main battle tanks, made in the 1970s for the West German armed forces. Under the terms of their sale, Berlin has the right to block them from being sold or transferred on to other militaries.

At the heart of the debate is Germany’s self-declared tradition of anti-militarism since the Second World War. The doctrine hasn’t prevented the country from becoming a major player in the arms market, but apparently is seen by Scholz and his advisers as prohibiting Ukraine from accessing some kinds of hardware. Given the Leopards’ obvious offensive capabilities, the Chancellor has apparently been hesitant to move past supplying more defensive weapons and bolster Kyiv’s ability to counterattack.

Amid the discussion, Germany’s embattled Defence Minister, Christine Lambrecht, resigned last week. As the public face of the country’s equivocating response to the war, she had been publicly mocked for the decision to offer helmets while other nations boxed up their rockets, as well as for blunders in reforming the military. But it was a New Year’s Eve PR video that saw the most scorn poured on her, reflecting on the friendly meetings she’d had during the brutal war as fireworks lit up the sky in the distance. The decision on the Leopards, Berlin said, would fall to her successor, Boris Pistorius, who had previously opposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine.

Over the weekend, NATO nations met at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to discuss the issue, while Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Zelenskyi, insisted that “every day of delay is the death of Ukrainians.” Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov revealed that he had “a frank discussion” about the Leopard 2 with German counterparts. “To be continued,” he added, dashing hopes of an imminent breakthrough. There had also been hopes that the US would agree to calls to export its advanced M1 Abrams tank, giving Germany cloud cover to follow suit. But concerns over the technology falling into unfriendly hands and questions around fuel efficiency and supply lines appear to have held back that plan.

Now though, it appears Berlin is backtracking. Foreign Minister Anna Baerbock said on Monday that she “would not stand in the way” of efforts by Poland to ship the tanks to Ukraine. According to her, there has been no formal request at present. The move was widely seen as a sign that the level of international support for the move has grown to levels that can no longer be blocked out. However, Scholz’s spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit later suggested that Baerbock’s statement did not represent a decision agreed upon by the government.

Merkel may have held Putin’s icy gaze in that meeting 21 years ago but, with Germany’s allies being increasingly vocal about the need to face Russia head on, it seems her successors may finally have blinked.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

For days, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been embarking on a major shake-up of his military forces, changing top personnel around in an effort to revive his struggling offensive in Ukraine. At the same time, commanders in the field are ploughing thousands of mobilised reservists and prison battalions run by the Wagner Group mercenary outfit onto the front lines in the east of the country. Brutal battles and artillery duels have broken out around the cities of Soledar and Bakhmut, with reports the killing fields are so full of bodies that it’s impossible to even count the dead.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, Putin has issued an ultimatum to the top brass, insisting that they do whatever needs to be done to conquer the remaining areas of the Donbas – which the Kremlin declared in September to be Russian territory after a series of sham referendums. In a briefing on Tuesday, his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, refused to confirm or deny that the order had been given, but claimed fears of a return to mass mobilization are being “artificially stirred up” from inside and outside the country. With Moscow having previously denied anyone would be drafted at all, many young men like Kolya are wary of the prospect of another round of conscription.

If they want to push back Ukraine’s defenders with sheer manpower, the Russians evidently have a tough job on their hands. In December, the Wagner Group’s top boss, convicted fraudster, catering magnate and Putin confidante, Yevgeny Prigozhin, described Bakhmut as a “meat grinder.” Speaking this month, he went on to say that “every house is a fortress,” showing lines of coffins holding the bloodied remains of his fighters, often former inmates and men lured by the promise of sizeable paychecks.

A new Donbas offensive will unleash yet more death and destruction as part of Putin’s plan to carve up Ukraine, but it could also be a precursor to the Kremlin announcing that its objectives have been met. Having started the war claiming the neighbouring nation would be “demilitarised” and “de-Nazified,” Russia’s spurious goals have since seemingly shifted to taking control of the areas it currently lays claim to – Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south. While their troops have routed in the latter two areas, failing to hold their regional capitals, the focus is clearly on making gains where they can.

At the same time, to deal with a fresh onslaught of thousands of poorly-trained, ill-equipped Russians, Western nations are stepping up their support for Ukraine. Those defending Bakhmut, the BBC reports, have urged their allies to hand over main battle tanks, one of the few pieces of hardware other countries had been holding back. The UK confirmed over the weekend that it would dispatch 14 Challenger 2 tanks, with EU capitals weighing up the logistics of sending more. Germany, which has been consistently reluctant to fully meet Kyiv’s requests, saw its defence minister resign amid the discussions, with the decision on whether to ship over a fleet of Leopard-2 tanks now falling to the newly appointed Boris Pistorius.

Meanwhile, much of the world was horrified by the scenes of devastation in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro after a Russian rocket smashed into an apartment building, killing at least 30 people. The attack on a residential area, just the latest in an unfolding campaign of terror being waged by the Kremlin, also damaged energy infrastructure. Yet the fact it was reportedly carried out with an anti-ship missile led to speculation that Moscow is scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to hardware and munitions, while Kyiv is pushing to secure more Western weaponry.

With Putin doubling down on efforts to salvage a “win” from his catastrophic invasion, many fear a long war could be on the cards, even if the weapons his troops use become more primitive and their tactics all the more barbaric. For the time being, Ukrainians are watching the skies and preparing for a spring thaw when, analysts predict, a set of new breakthroughs could change the balance of the conflict once again.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

Those captured during the three-month siege faced brutal treatment at the hands of the Russians, with malnutrition, beatings and a lack of medical care. One Ukrainian marine, Mykhailo Dianov, was barely recognisable when a prisoner exchange was eventually brokered – emaciated and with his broken arm set at an excruciating angle. Aslin’s case was a little different. Despite holding dual Ukrainian and British citizenship and having signed up for a contract with the country’s armed forces just like his brothers in arms, he was branded a foreign mercenary and sentenced to death by a kangaroo court operated by Moscow’s proxies in Donetsk. Only a deal brokered by the Saudi Arabian government spared his life and saw him return home.

Convinced of their superiority to Kyiv’s defenders, the idea that soldiers of fortune from overseas are turning the tide of the war has become a national obsession in Russia. “Precision strikes eliminated 130 foreign mercenaries,” a Defence Ministry official claimed just last week in yet another unevidenced missive. According to Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, more than 3,000 fighters from the UK, US, Poland and Canada have been killed in the hostilities so far “despite the fact that in most countries mercenary work is banned by law.”

And yet, all the while claiming to be fighting a shadowy army of paid-to-fight soldiers, Russia has itself become entirely dependent on the notorious Wagner Group, a private military company with a record of human rights abuses from Africa to Eastern Europe. While the firm was once shrouded in secrecy, the Ukraine war has given it a marketing opportunity like no other – going as far as opening a glass-and-steel headquarters in St. Petersburg.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch, convicted fraudster and close confidante of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has long been believed to be the man behind the mercenary outfit. But prior to the invasion in February, the catering company magnate would sue for defamation anyone who so much as suggested he was involved with the Wagner Group – which had at the time been running operations in Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic. Now, Prigozhin regularly appears in recruiting videos, touring prisons across the country to sign up desperate men to send to the front lines.

In one clip shot on Prigozhin’s mobile phone, he interviews one of his employees who has been deployed to the apocalyptic battlefront near the city of Bakhmut. In broken Russian, the camouflage-clad man explains he is from Cote d’Ivoire and had been serving time in a prison colony before being let out to become a stormtrooper. “Don’t tell them what you were in jail for,” the oligarch laughs, “the only question is how well you fight.”

In December, the White House warned that the Wagner Group was looking to escalate the conflict, having bought weaponry from North Korea and shipped it to Ukraine. Rockets and missiles were said to have been included in the shipments. Now, US lawmakers are considering designating it a terrorist organisation, and eyeing its global influence in places like the Middle East and North Africa.

However, Prigozhin’s outfit may well pose a threat in an unexpected country – Russia itself. The emboldened mercenary gang master has already shown he is unafraid of using his newfound value to publicly criticise Moscow’s top brass, having accused generals of failing in their duties and making mistakes in Ukraine.

In one well-covered spat, Prigozhin backed a soldier who described the army Chief of Staff as a “motherfucker” in an expletive-laden video rant, accusing the Kremlin of giving conscripts inadequate weapons and equipment. “We are fighting against the entire Ukrainian army near Bakhmut. Where are you? It’s about time you help us,” the soldier said. “When you’re sitting in a warm office, it’s hard to hear the problems on the frontline,” Priogzhin explained.

On Monday, he hit out at Defence Ministry claims that the army was leading an offensive on Soledar, a salt mine town where they have made advances. “I’d like to stress that Soledar is being taken solely by Wagner units,” he wrote in a statement on Telegram. The pyrrhic victory is a rare success story for the country’s catastrophic war effort, and Priogzhin is clearly wasting no time in taking credit for it.

And yet, it’s not the training or the equipment that Wagner gives its troops that seems to be making a difference, but its ability to levy large numbers of inmates, debtors and other vulnerable people, and its willingness to march them into machine gun fire. According to a US official who spoke to The Guardian last week, out of 50,000 mercenaries recruited by the military company, more than 4,100 have been killed in action and a further 10,000 wounded. Over 1,000 were killed between late November and early December near Bakhmut alone.

According to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch hounded out of Putin’s Russia for his political activism, Wagner bosses now have as much power as Kremlin insiders and even top government ministers. “They are engaged in terrorism and killing,” he told the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in November, urging Western nations to take action against its finances and operations.

With its conventional forces weighed down by corruption and incompetence, Wagner is evidently on the rise, pitching itself as a slicker, more effective alternative. So too is the personal phalanx of fighters commanded by Chechen despot and Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov, which has long operated outside of Moscow’s control in Ukraine. While analysts say the so-called Kadyrovtsi have struggled to make an impact on the battlefield, preferring taking selfies to launching attacks, they are famed for their brutality and their ability to sow terror into civilian populations.

As the Kremlin’s war falters, the private armies it has given rise to are becoming stronger and more unpredictable than ever before. And, if Putin’s days in office are eventually brought down by the disaster he himself created, there’s every chance they could end up fighting for control not of Ukraine, but of Russia.

Email your letters on the subjects of the day and to comment on points raised in Reaction articles to letters@reaction.life

In a televised speech as rescuers sifted through the rubble, Volodymyr Zelenskyi declared that the attacks were an act of cowardice and fear on Russia’s part. “And they are right to be afraid because they will lose,” he went on.

As if to underline his point, just hours earlier Kyiv had been carrying out a New Year’s Eve strike of its own, doing far more damage to the enemy and striking deep at the heart of Moscow’s occupying force. Using an American-made HIMARS rocket launcher, the Ukrainian armed forces reportedly hit a converted school that was being used as a base for Russia’s troops and their proxies in Makiivka, an industrial city just outside Donetsk in the eastern Donbas.

According to a statement from Ukrainian commanders, around 400 soldiers were killed and a further 300 injured, although officials have refused to confirm or deny whether they were behind the blast and since said that the casualty count is yet to be confirmed. They have since taken responsibility for hitting “Russian manpower and military equipment.” Pictures and video from the scene shows a smoking crater where the building once was.

Despite knowing that HIMARS rockets are able to strike deep into the territory they occupy and are virtually impossible to shoot down, the mainly-conscript force was put up close to an ammunition dump, sources say. When the store of ammunition and explosives went up, few nearby could have had any hopes of survival.

Now, questions are growing inside Russia about who is to blame. In a rare acknowledgement, Moscow’s Ministry of Defence announced that 63 of its servicemen were killed, making it by their own admission among the deadliest episodes of the war for the Kremlin’s forces. Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who organised militias in occupied Eastern Ukraine after the start of the conflict in 2014, blamed officers for failing to camouflage military hardware and quartering soldiers so close to munitions.

The incident is just the latest in a string of apparent failings that have enraged even the most pro-war Russian commentators. Mobilised conscripts have reportedly been sent into battle with rusting Soviet gear, without clear orders and assigned to roles they aren’t trained for. One so-called “mobik” who spoke to independent news site Meduza in the days after summons were handed out said that well-drilled snipers had been told they would be made infantrymen or mortar crews. Meanwhile, there are reports morale is at an all-time low given the setbacks on the front lines, and the fact that those who signed up for contracts for a few months are being refused leave to return home indefinitely.

For many Russians, the problem is not so much that Russia is fighting an illegal war against a country many considered a brother nation. The problem is that Russia is losing. “The cowards you see in Georgia, Armenia and Turkey just ran away,” Nika, a 24-year-old student from Krasnodar tells Reaction, adding that she will always support her country, despite being initially shocked by the invasion. “The best and bravest stayed. But they aren’t getting what they need to do their job.”

With anger growing at what was supposed to be a quick, surgical operation to destroy Ukraine’s sovereignty, it’s not clear where the fingers will be pointed next. Putin has already dismissed several commanders, while many more have died either in the field or under mysterious circumstances. Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu has virtually vanished from public amid growing failures, and few of his inner circle rivals could envy taking over his job.

What is clear, though, is that Ukraine’s armed forces are better trained, better equipped and better motivated, wielding Western and domestically-made weaponry with devastating effect. While the Russians strike at power stations and let loose dozens of cheap Iranian drones over populated areas, Kyiv has its sights firmly set on beating back the Russians and making their country the most dangerous place in the world to be an enemy soldier.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

Just days before the tanks started rolling, Serbia’s most popular tabloid newspaper, Informer, had splashed its front page with claims that “Ukraine attacked Russia,” warning readers that “Americans are pushing the world into chaos.” For centuries, the Balkan nation has maintained close economic, political and social ties with Moscow, and those ties have only deepened after the US and NATO intervened against Serbian nationalist forces in 1999 as they invaded Kosovo amid the breakup of the Yugoslavian state. Putin even cited the West’s support for Kosovo, which Moscow refuses to recognise and Serbia regards as its territory, as a precedent for creating his proxy states in the Ukrainian Donbass.

Now though, with Russia’s war dividing Europe, the government of Serbia has had to make a series of difficult choices. Despite the clamour and conspiracies at home, the country’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, has been reluctant to get embroiled in the conflict and risk alienating either his allies in the Kremlin, or his largest trading partners in the EU. In April, as news of Russian war crimes reverberated around the world, Belgrade joined 91 other nations in voting to kick Moscow out of the UN Human Rights Council, a move that Vučić admitted was down to the “threat of facing sanctions and increasing pressures.”

Earlier this month, following a meeting with EU officials, Vučić insisted that Serbia remained resolutely opposed to efforts to isolate Russia, but vowed to not fall foul of Western economic restrictions itself. “As long as we can resist, without endangering our most vital and state interests, we will” Vučić explained. “When we can’t, we will turn to our people, the citizens, and we will show them why Serbia can no longer resist the imposition of sanctions.”

Now though, political tensions are rising, and the issue of Kosovo is once again coming between Serbia and the West. For over a week, ethnic Serbs in the north of the breakaway state, home to 1.8 million people, have erected barricades and staged confrontations with their Albanian majority neighbours. Traffic has been blocked, explosions have rung out and a Kosovan police patrol has come under fire amid the worsening standoff, which locals say has been fuelled by the arrest of an ethnic Serb ex-police officer, accused of attacking his former colleagues.

At the same time, a Serbian nationalist militia has ordered its members to the border with Kosovo in a show of support for their countrymen living on the other side of the tense demarcation line and threatening to confront NATO soldiers stationed in the region. The group, known as the ‘People’s Patrol,’ is believed to have links to the notorious Russian mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, which is currently conscripting prisoners to fight Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have peaked several times this year, with a number of altercations over the mutual recognition of travel documents and access for cars with license plates issued in each other’s jurisdiction. The EU, which has increasingly played the role of peacemaker in the region, has mediated negotiations and a serious conflict has so far been avoided. Now, Brussels, the US and a number of international organisations are calling on local Serbs living in Kosovo to dismantle the barricades and help avoid the outbreak of serious violence.

Serbia, though, is only becoming more assertive. Under the terms of a previous UN resolution, Vučić has requested that NATO grant permission for him to send 1,000 police and military personnel to northern Kosovo, claiming they are needed to protect ethnic the Serbs there. The request is the first time that a Serbian military intervention has been considered since the 1999 war and, while analysts say it will be swiftly rejected, represents a serious escalation in rhetoric and there are fears of a new military conflict.

For some, though, it’s clear that the flames are being fanned from afar. “I think that the worry of our Western partners and friends is the links of Belgrade with Moscow. We do not know how they could be rendered operative in case of rising of tensions, towards escalation in the north,” Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, said this week, after the Kremlin weighed in on the row, insisting it would “stand for ensuring that all the rights of the Serbs are guaranteed.”

“I think that their major concern is precisely this: now that Russia got severely wounded in Ukraine after its invasion and aggression, they have interest in spillover. They have interest in outsourcing their war-mongering drive to the Balkans where they have a client who’s in Belgrade,” he added.

At the same time, Kurti has sought to use the threat to drive greater integration with the West for his own nation, seeking to get the same welcome other nations on the fringes of Russia’s sphere of influence – like Moldova – have had from Brussels. “There is a war in Ukraine, let’s prevent spillover. Joining the EU would help,” he went on. “I see a certain readiness in the EU to think differently after the continent is at war.”

For the time being, peace talks are continuing. But fears are evidently building that an increasingly desperate Putin could be trying to open another front against Europe and divide the continent still further.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

Just past the mountainside city of Goris lies the Lachin Corridor, the only road in or out of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Inside Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognised borders, it has been held by its ethnic Armenian majority since a war that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, with around a million ethnic Azerbaijanis pushed out and the separatists taking control of around 4,000 square kilometers of territory.

Now though, the 100,000 people who call it home are cut off from the outside world. In the three decades since the first Karabakh War, Azerbaijan has transformed from a run-down colonial backwater to an immensely wealthy, modern state, thanks to both its massive oil and gas reserves and its close ties with Turkey. In 2020, its well-trained, well-equipped armed forces rolled across the mine-strewn fortified frontier into Nagorno-Karabakh, taking back an area of land the size of Lebanon after a series of fierce battles and preparing to resettle some of those who were displaced thirty years before.

Only a Moscow-brokered peace deal put an end to the fighting, leaving the Karabakh Armenians in control of their de facto capital, Stepanakert, and a number of towns and villages around it. Russian peacekeepers were deployed to hold the line and prevent further bloodshed, but distracted by its increasingly catastrophic war in Ukraine, Moscow is looking less and less able to enforce the status quo.

On Monday, a group of Azerbaijanis describing themselves as environmental activists pushed past the Russians and blocked the Lachin Corridor in a row ostensibly over the extraction of natural resources in Armenian-controlled Karabakh. The demonstrators, none of whom appear to have a particularly long record of environmentalism or public protest, were accompanied by television crews, erecting tents and making it clear they were there for the long haul.

The sole route in or out of Nagorno-Karabakh has now been blocked for more than 24 hours, leaving motorists travelling from Armenia to the disputed region stranded in their cars in freezing temperatures and holding up shipments of essential goods. “This is part of Azerbaijan’s genocidal policy,” Davit Babayan, the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s Foreign Minister announced at a crisis press conference in Stepanakert.

The supply of gas to the region has also since reportedly been cut, leaving locals without heating as temperatures are predicted to fall below freezing.

The blockade is the longest-running since the 2020 war, but the second in recent weeks. At the start of December, Azerbaijani officials moved to block the Lachin Corridor in an effort to inspect vehicles they say are transporting ‘stolen’ gold from mines in Armenian-held Karabakh, which they consider to be looting of their country’s natural resources. A tense standoff with the Russian peacekeepers ensued, and the flow of traffic was restored after a few hours.

As well as accusing the Armenians of using the Lachin Corridor to illegally export resources, Baku say it is also being used to ferry in military hardware and foreign nationals – including 14 Iranian citizens. Officials in Stepanakert deny the claims, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said the allegations are an attempt “to create grounds, invented grounds, for closing the Lachin Corridor, surrounding the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, and subjecting them to genocide and expatriation, under the pretext of Armenia not fulfilling its obligations.”

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has also tied the status of the Lachin Corridor to his demand that Armenia give up a 35-kilometre stretch of land along its southern border with Iran for use as a ‘sovereign highway’ between the mainland of his country and its exclave, Nakhichevan. According to him, the so-called Zangezur Corridor was a condition of the 2020 ceasefire, while the Armenians argue they are only obliged to open their borders for traffic from Azerbaijan, not hand over part of their own territory. “For two years, we have not been interfering with the cars moving from Armenia to Karabakh and in the opposite direction along the Lachin road,” Aliyev said in November. “How much longer are we supposed to wait?”

Now, with the row reaching crisis point, there are fears of a signficiant escalation. “If Azerbaijan keeps the road closed, we will have a humanitarian catastrophe,” says Tigran Grigoryan, an Armenian political analyst and former opposition politician from Stepanakert. Tom de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and author of several books about the conflict, has claimed that the environmental protestors are akin to the “Little Green Men” used by Russia to occupy Crimea in 2014 while denying it was invading. With the two sides failing to find diplomatic common ground, “there’s a big risk that we get a serious new outbreak of violence by default,” he tweeted.

Given a major Azerbaijani offensive in August saw hundreds of servicemen killed and Armenian society gear up for what could be an existential war, collecting supplies for soldiers and laying on paramilitary training for civilians, everyone is on edge. For the time being, many of those who call Nagorno-Karabakh home are stuck, on one side of the mountains or the other.

In 2014, after the Kremlin sent its infamous “little green men” to capture Crimea, preparations began on what would become Europe’s longest bridge, a symbol of the peninsula’s supposed unending ties to Russia. To celebrate its opening four years later, the country’s longtime leader put on a pair of jeans and a bomber jacket and drove an orange construction truck into occupied Ukraine as spectators watched on. Putin cuts a very different figure these days, turning up for a closely guarded secret visit to the massive infrastructure project, which was damaged in a blast in September, wearing an £11,500 puffer jacket.

And yet, the fact that Putin had to make the visit at all is remarkable. Prior to February’s full-blown invasion, most foreign nations had all but accepted Russian control over Crimea, with Moscow’s fossil fuels continuing to flow to the West while European cash and luxury goods poured in. Russia’s increasingly dire situation on the battlefield, however, is forcing many to reassess how unshakeable its grip really is.

In September, the Kremlin published a decree in which it formally declared that four regions of Eastern Ukraine – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – were now fully-fledged parts of the Russian Federation, following a series of referendums dismissed by the international community as entirely illegitimate. Since then, though, its army has been unable to hold even the single regional capital it had managed to conquer during the war, evacuating surrounded Kherson just weeks later. Russia, it seems, is unable to keep hold of territory it considers to be Russian.

In recent days, wary Western leaders have come under fire for appearing to call for Putin to be appeased. Kyiv hit out at French President Emmanuel Macron over the weekend after he said Russia would need “security guarantees” to eventually end the war, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz – seen by Ukrainians as a perpetually unreliable partner – spoke of welcoming Russia back into the European community following the war, chatting with Putin on the phone for an hour on Friday.

There are now predictions that fighting will slow as the winter sets in, with Washington’s Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, saying over the weekend that a “reduced tempo” would be expected over the coming months, before the Ukrainians have an opportunity to launch another major counteroffensive in the spring. At the same time, she added, Putin no longer has the luxury of only being told what he wants to hear by his top brass. The president “is becoming more informed of the challenges that the military faces in Russia,” she said, “but it’s still not clear to us that he has a full picture at this stage of just how challenged they are.”

With temperatures expected to drop to 20 degrees below zero, and Putin aware his forces need time to rest and resupply, it’s entirely possible that the large-front operations that have seen Kyiv regain so much territory could be put on ice. And yet, more unconventional warfare could simultaneously play a larger role, as both sides bed in and warm clothes, reliable equipment and a steady stream of supplies become more important. Under those conditions, the duel between Russian air power and Ukrainian air defenses matters more as well, given the potentially catastrophic consequences of strikes on heating and electricity grids, and on logistics centers.

On Monday, two Russian military airfields, hundreds of miles from the border, were shaken by explosions that are believed to have damaged several long-range strategic bombers. Officials in Moscow admit that targets well inside their country were hit, claiming that a Soviet-era Tu-141 Strizh drone – first made in the 1970s – was used in the attack. The idea that Ukraine is repurposing Communist-era tech might well have been designed to play down Kyiv’s growing technological supremacy, but the idea that the bulky reconnaissance UAVs could penetrate so far into Russia without being shot down is in itself a damning indictment – and one that has sparked theories of a far more sophisticated sabotage plan.

At the same time, the idea of explosions in Russian cities nowhere near the front line will do little to help the war’s already-diminishing popularity among ordinary people. “I’ve been scared since February,” one local in Samara, a city not far from one of the airfields hit on Monday, tells Reaction. “Now I’m really considering leaving for good.” In an effort to quell fears, one regional news outlet declared that the city, designed to be Josef Stalin’s second capital if Moscow fell to the Nazis in the Second World War, “has such a huge number of shelters that, if necessary, all residents can hide in them.”

With more and more Russians fearing that sanctions, conscription and military actions will begin to affect their lives – of course, far less than the war has affected Ukrainians – Putin seems to be facing a popularity problem. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov was pressed over the weekend on whether Putin would visit the occupied territories of Ukraine, shaking off his bunker mentality. “He will eventually,” came the reply. Instead, the Russian President went to territory his country has occupied for the best part of a decade to prove that his much-vaunted bridge hasn’t been totally reduced to rubble.

At this rate, Putin can only be hoping that military operations grind to a halt, that Western calls for some kind of favourable deal come through, and that he can give Russians something to celebrate before it’s too late.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

Now, Lukashenko’s increasingly authoritarian regime has only had Russia to turn to for political support, with plans to attract Chinese investment falling flat. Since last year, when the authorities used a bomb hoax to force a Ryanair plane to land in a bid to arrest an anti-government blogger, the country’s airlines have been barred from flying over EU airspace. Belarus’ banks are shut out of European financial institutions, its state industries are barred from exporting to the West and top officials are banned from travelling across much of the continent.

As Foreign Minister, Vladimir Makei had his work cut out for him. To some, the former army colonel was the public face of one of the world’s most brutal states. But for others, he was the man most likely to end up ousting Lukashenko, bringing an end to the autocrat’s 28-year rule. Widely regarded as more pro-European than his boss, he scrapped restrictive visa measures and pursued closer trade ties with the West, until the 2020 election forced him to spend more time talking with Moscow instead.

Now though, the prospect of Makei taking the reins has vanished. On Sunday, state news agency Belta announced that the country’s top diplomat had “passed away suddenly” at the age of 64. The Belarusian foreign minister had been due to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Minsk the same day.

“We are shocked by the reports of the death of the Head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus Vladimir Makei,” Lavrov’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, announced. “Official condolences will be published soon.” Lukashenko’s regime has been one of Russia’s only real allies in its war against Ukraine, allowing Moscow’s forces to launch rockets and ground attacks from within the country.

Meanwhile, exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who believes she is the rightful winner of the 2020 election, said that his complicity in the crackdown on demonstrators made him a figure deserving of contempt. “In 2020, Makei betrayed the Belarusian people and supported tyranny. This is how the Belarusian people will remember him,” she said.

Not known to have been suffering with any illnesses, Makei had appeared perfectly healthy just days before at a summit of former Soviet states in Armenia, attended by Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The cause of his death is unknown, but the circumstances have lent themselves to speculation that foul play was involved.

“It does appear Makei was poisoned by the FSB,” Swedish economist and Russia commentator Anders Åslund has since claimed, blaming Moscow’s top domestic intelligence agency. At the same time, former Kremlin advisor Sergei Markov has accused Polish special services of being behind what he claims is the assassination of the Belarusian diplomat, arguing that Tsikhanouskaya herself is an agent of Polish influence.

Former Belarusian military officer and opposition figure Valery Sakhashchyk, has since said that while Makei was “deformed” by ties to Lukashenko, he had still been “undoubtedly some kind of bridge with the West.”

The cloak and dagger intrigue, and the act Belarus is a geopolitical battleground, has fuelled dozens of theories online, ranging from claims that the purported killing was done to send a message from Moscow to Lukahenko, to reports that Makei had opened illicit backchannels to the West. For the time being, none are supported by any hard evidence.

Other strange details have since surfaced, including the fact that Makei flew to and from the Yerevan summit not in Lukashenko’s plush presidential jet, but in a stripped-down, unheated military cargo plane, along with a small cadre of other officials.

What is clear, though, is that with Putin’s war imposing a new Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe, less information is making its way out than at any point since the fall of the USSR  – and mutual suspicion is at an all-time high. Whether Makei was a handshaking apparatchik from a repressive state or a pro-Western reformer depends on who you ask, but questions around the circumstances of his death may go unanswered for the time being.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

Now, two months on, with Russian forces having pulled out of Kherson – the only regional capital they’d conquered since the invasion – it appears Putin was bluffing. Since then, the rhetoric around the risk of atomic war has more or less died down, with reports that China is pressuring the Kremlin to de-escalate.

On Monday, state propaganda TV host Olga Skabeeva said that, if Ukrainian soldiers moved to capture a single village inside Russia’s internationally-recognized borders, Moscow would have to launch nuclear missiles at Kyiv “without hesitation.” But hers is a more isolated voice than ever before, with senior regime figures seemingly hesitant about the prospect of global armageddon.

However, the rapid and ongoing collapse of Putin’s demoralised and depleted troops still carries a risk of disaster. In a statement issued yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned that shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest, had come close to causing a serious crisis. The UN nuclear watchdog’s chief, Rafael Grossi, said those responsible for the clashes were taking “huge risks and gambling with many people’s lives,” even if there were no immediate nuclear safety concerns.

The intervention comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi told NATO members that Moscow could be planning to sabotage atomic energy plants in an effort to undermine his country’s energy grid, sow panic and raise the cost of the war for his citizens still further. “We all need guaranteed protection from Russian sabotage at nuclear facilities,” he added, emphasising the fact that a radioactive leak could affect the whole continent.

Those fears were only heightened when the director of Rosatom, Moscow’s nuclear energy regulator, said an accident at the Zaporizhzhia power station could be on the cards. “The plant is at risk of a nuclear accident,” Alexey Likhachev told reporters. “We were in negotiations with the IAEA all night.” In the hours that followed, Russian Telegram channels reported that a deal had been done to hand the facility back to Ukrainian forces, but no such move has yet been announced.

Ultimately, Russia’s decision to put Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on the front line is what has raised risks of a disaster where before there had been none, and given the tide of the war has clearly swung in favour of Kyiv, it’s only a matter of time before Moscow loses control of the site. The only question now is whether Putin’s inner circle are willing to face up to that reality and act to avoid an incident that would likely cost the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of their own citizens as well.

The retreat from Kherson, where an estimated 40,000 Russian troops were close to being totally surrounded, shows that the Kremlin can accept the reality on the ground when it suits its interests. And in a part of the world where the Chernobyl disaster is ingrained in living memory, it is hard to imagine many would want to risk repeating it.

In a briefing on Tuesday morning, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, again played down the prospect of a nuclear exchange. “The current crisis and the Cuban missile crisis are different,” he insisted, referencing the moment the US and the Soviet Union came closest to all-out atomic war. “But both then and now are about a clash between us and the collective West.”

The only difference this time, it seems, is that paranoia and mutual distrust could bring about a world-shattering disaster by accident, rather than by the push of a button. 

In a statement issued on Tuesday afternoon, Poland’s Foreign Ministry said that “at 3.40pm today, a Russian-made missile landed in the village of Przewodów,” a rural farming community in the east of the country, just 10 kilometers from the border with Ukraine. According to officials, two Polish citizens were killed in the blast.

“We are acting with calm,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said, warning that “this is a difficult situation.” Warsaw has summoned the Russian ambassador to provide an explanation.

In response, envoys from NATO states, including Poland, will meet in Brussels to discuss a potential response, while investigators race to determine which side launched the missile and whether it amounts to a deliberate attack on the bloc. Such a strike could be grounds for triggering Article 5 of the alliance’s foundational treaty, which states that aggression against any one member is considered aggression against all 30 members.

However, speaking at the G20 summit of world leaders in Bali hours after Warsaw sounded the alarm, US President Joe Biden said it was “unlikely in the lines of trajectory that it was fired from Russia, but we’ll see.”

The initial findings of a probe into the circumstances has determined that the missile could have been launched by Ukrainian air defence forces as part of efforts to shoot down an incoming Russian rocket, Associated Press reported on Wednesday morning, citing unnamed American officials.

Kyiv issued air raid warnings across the entire country on both Tuesday and Wednesday after Russia launched as many as 85 missiles against civilian infrastructure, leaving several cities without power. Analysts had warned that the Kremlin could step up its bombing campaign after its troops were forced to retreat from the occupied city of Kherson last week as Ukraine continues to liberate territory as part of a major counteroffensive.

Russian missiles have previously violated the airspace of other nations in the region, with Moldova having lodged a protest after a rocket launched from a ship in the Black Sea crashed in the country after being shot down by Ukrainian air defences. Both Moscow and Kyiv’s forces operate the Soviet-designed S-300 surface-to-air launcher that can target warplanes and cruise missiles at a range of up to 40 kilometers.

In an address to his citizens on Tuesday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the explosion in Przewodów was proof that “terror is not limited by our state borders.” According to him: “We need to put the terrorist in its place. The longer Russia feels impunity, the more threats there will be for everyone within the reach of Russian missiles.”

Given Moscow was warned unambiguously in the run up to February’s invasion that Western nations would do whatever they could to support Ukraine in the event of an all-out conflict, her realisation is about nine months too late. And yet, even a few weeks ago, Skabeeva’s admission on the airwaves would have automatically been a criminal offense. Times are changing, it seems, and it’s getting harder and harder for Moscow’s elite to pretend their offensive is going to plan.

Beating a hasty retreat from Kherson last week, Russian forces handed back the only Ukrainian regional capital they had captured to date. Kremlin defence chiefs say the evacuation to the east banks of the Dnipro River was necessary to avoid 40,000 soldiers being encircled, and to shore up their frontlines across the territory they still control.

However, analysts predict that the liberation of Kherson puts Kyiv’s US-made missile launchers in range of the roads being used to bring in military hardware from occupied Crimea. Those defending Ukraine were already better equipped, better trained and better motivated than their foes, but now they have the momentum as well. With winter on the way, Moscow is in a weaker position than ever before.

Yet, at the same time, some of Kyiv’s closest allies have been piling on the pressure for peace talks to resume, after they collapsed earlier this year following a series of unproductive summits brokered by Turkey. “There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word, not achievable through military means,” the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley said last week. “And therefore, you need to turn to other means.”

Washington has since clarified that it is fundamentally down to Ukraine to decide when it’s time to talk peace, with the State Department reiterating only Kyiv can come up with a framework for discussions. The statement came in response to a Washington Post report that President Joe Biden’s White House was encouraging Ukrainian leaders to contemplate a compromise, despite having publicly refused to deal with Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, Mail Online cites a controversial Kremlinologist, Valeri Solovey, who claims that the Kremlin has been offered surrender terms that would see it give up the territory of Ukraine it occupies, except for Crimea which would become a demilitarised zone until the end of the decade. Putin would be allowed to stay in power, Solovey insists, and his inner circle would escape charges for war crimes.

In reality though, the chances of a negotiated truce seem slim. With Ukraine’s defenders on course to hand Russia a colossal defeat, anything short of victory would likely seem like unfavourable terms. Russia too has struggled on an institutional level to face up to the scale of the challenges it faces, doubling down on the rhetoric and throwing yet more young men into the breach. Quite how it could justify to the public doing a deal with what Putin insists is a “Nazi regime,” without his authority entirely falling apart, is unclear.

To complicate matters still further, in September the Kremlin published a decree in which is “annexed” the regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk following a series of referendums widely decried by the international media as shams, marred by fraud and intimidation. Despite the lack of international recognition for the illegal landgrab, Moscow is now locked into defending those areas as though they were a legitimate part of Russia – with constitutional reforms passed just last year making it illegal for them to be negotiated away.

For many Ukrainians, the idea of doing a deal with Russia is akin to doing one with the devil – what can truly be agreed with a state that can’t be trusted to uphold its end of the bargain? The idea that Moscow would simply use a truce to regroup, re-arm and hatch another plan for conquest won’t be far from the front of mind for Kyiv’s officials. Russia might never admit defeat, but the Ukrainians will likely hand it one anyway.

With neither side ready or willing to put an end to the war straight away, it is likely to continue much as it is already – with Kyiv liberating more and more of its territory each day. Unless Putin is ready to capitulate, or decides to try and change the game with atomic weapons, his own situation will get more and more dire as time goes on. Ultimately, he may end up wishing he’d taken one of the many off-ramps available to him, especially if it looks like his presidency could be just another casualty of the conflict.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

In a televised statement on Wednesday evening, General Sergey Surovikin, the overall commander of the Kremlin’s invasion forces, said that the retreat is needed “to preserve the lives of our troops and the combat readiness of our units” given they are at risk of being surrounded. The decision was then agreed by Moscow’s Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu.

An estimated 40,000 Russian soldiers are believed to be in the area at present, including both regular units and conscripts called up to fight following a mobilisation order in September.

The order will see them abandon Kherson, a strategic south-coast Black Sea port city that was home to more than a quarter of a million people prior to the start of Russia’s full-scale war. Kherson was one of the earliest major cities to fall to Moscow’s troops as they advanced in March, and reports from the occupied city have detailed widespread arrests and torture of Ukrainian citizens who stayed behind.

Hours prior to the announcement, it was confirmed that the Russian-installed deputy governor of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, had been killed in what authorities say was a car crash. He is the latest in a string of collaborationist Ukrainian officials to die in recent weeks, and much of the pro-occupation administration had already been evacuated to the East of the Dnipro.

On 30 September, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree “annexing” the region, along with nearby Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk, following a referendum widely decried by the international community as a sham and marred by fraud and intimidation. That decision will make Kherson the largest city formally claimed by Moscow to have been liberated, and was the only regional capital captured by the Russians to date.

The retreat comes amid a spate of battlefield victories for Ukrainian defenders, who have in recent weeks taken back dozens of settlements as part of a counteroffensive further north, around the city of Kharkiv. In response to the setbacks, Putin announced that ordinary Russian citizens would begin to be drafted into the army to fill the gaps left by the tens of thousands of troops who have been captured, injured or killed.

Yet officials in Kyiv have urged caution in response to the news. “Until the Ukrainian flag is flying over Kherson, it makes no sense to talk about a Russian withdrawal,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Zelensky, said in a statement to Reuters.

Meanwhile, pro-war Russian accounts on social media platform Telegram have gone into overdrive to insist that the colossal retreat is not a complete disaster. “If anyone thinks that the surrender of Kherson is the end of the war, they are mistaken,” one popular far-right channel claims. “Don’t be so happy. We will return, and your frozen hungry cities will be your grave.”

However, the loss of the Kherson evidently has the potential to be a turning point in a war that has already slipped out of Moscow’s control, and the abandonment of yet more territory that Moscow now insists is its own will only raise more questions about the leadership of the so-called “special military operation.”

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

This week will see temperatures in the contested east of the country drop consistently below zero for the first time since the early months of the conflict. In February, Moscow’s forces were on the march, their best-trained, best-equipped personnel making a furious beeline towards major Ukrainian cities, and with the prospect of warmer months ahead. Nine months on, the vast majority of Russia’s professional army has now been scarred by combat, with entire formations destroyed, as seasoned fighters are replaced by fresh-eyed draftees. And now, it’s getting cold.

Conventional military wisdom holds that wars slow down in the winter, particularly in the frigid conditions of Eastern Europe. At the best of times, Moscow’s commanders have struggled to co-ordinate massive battlefield operations, linking up the ground forces with airpower, naval support and logistical supply chains. As the weather starts to limit the amount of time that its jaded soldiers can spend outside, and increases the demand for fuel and heating equipment, they will have to act fast to avoid leaving their troops to battle frostbite as well as their foes.

The military picture isn’t entirely clear though. As intelligence reports came in earlier this year, cautioning Russian President Vladimir Putin was poised to launch an attack, many analysts claimed that it would have to take place before the weather warmed up – with tanks operating better on frozen ground. While armoured onslaughts have continued regardless of the muddy conditions, it remains to be seen whether changing conditions favour one form of warfare over another.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has been getting ready for winter to change the game, pushing its Western allies to supply more and more anti-air systems to protect its civilians and infrastructure from frequent attacks by warplanes and rockets, which would continue even if other combat operations grind to a halt. With the Russians increasingly targeting power and heating grids, entire cities have been left in the dark and the cold – a problem that becomes only more pressing with freezing temperatures on the horizon.

At the same time, the Ukrainians have become experts in reversing the damage caused by missile and drone strikes. Images of craters in roads repaired overnight went viral last month after the Kremlin ordered yet another massive barrage, while the heating director of frontline Ukrainian city Mykolaiv told Canadian journalist Neil Hauer that, thanks to his team’s work, “since the start of the war, the longest power outage here has been just five hours.”

Yet winter presents another problem for Kyiv. Since the war started, Western nations have moved to cut off the flow of Russian gas to Europe – and the flow of European money it brings back to Moscow. While the EU and the UK have moved to secure alternative supplies, with Norway, Azerbaijan and a number of other nations stepping up production of oil and gas to meet the shortfall, energy supplies are still looking precarious as the switch takes place. Predictions this winter could be warmer than anticipated have brought some relief to governments warning of potential shortages and blackouts, but severe disruption could easily distract the public from the war Ukraine and destabilise some of its closest allies.

A growing number of mainstream politicians are already seeking to normalise criticism of the West’s support for Kyiv in the conflict. French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen ran unsuccessfully for her country’s top job earlier this year with a warning that ordinary people would suffer as a result of the fossil fuel embargoes.

A number of US Republicans have echoed the same pro-Kremlin stance, with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green insisting “not another cent” would be sent to Ukraine if her party controls the legislature. JD Vance, a controversial conservative candidate campaigning to become a Senator in Ohio, has also publicly stated he doesn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine,” calling for Americans to worry about their own circumstances first and foremost.

With the US midterm elections being held today, the popular vote is a tough test for Western solidarity, and for President Joe Biden’s virtually unprecedented lend lease programme that has helped keep Kyiv from falling into the Kremlin’s grasp. Meanwhile, notorious oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin – the man behind Russia’s notorious Wagner Group mercenary outfit, admitted in a statement this week that his country has “interfered, is interfering and will continue to interfere” in American elections, highlighting just how seriously Putin’s inner circle take the battle playing out in Washington.

For Putin, winter may bring a much-needed lull in the fighting that will allow his troops to train and resupply, preparing for another all-out offensive in the spring. If and when that happens, Ukraine will be looking Westwards for support – and hoping its allies haven’t gone into total hibernation.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

It’s not the first time the neighbouring former Soviet Republic has found itself in the crossfire since President Vladimir Putin announced his full-scale invasion in February. Officials in the capital, Chisináu, have previously sounded the alarm over Russian rockets, launched by warships in the Black Sea, flying through their airspace en route to targets in Western Ukraine. And in June, a Moldovan-flagged fuel tanker adrift in the same waters was hit by a missile, sparking fears of ecological disaster.

At the same time, the tiny Eastern European nation, home to just over two and a half million people, has been taking a tough line against the Kremlin. “Russia’s unjust war against Ukraine clearly shows us the price of freedom,” Moldovan President Maia Sandu declared in August. Elected two years ago on a pro-reform agenda, the former World Bank economist has cut the close ties Chisináu has kept with Moscow since the fall of the USSR and taken her country on a sharp pivot towards the West.

So far, it has been greeted with open arms. In June, Brussels announced it would grant candidate status to Moldova at the same time as Ukraine, clearing the path for the country – one of the continent’s poorest – to join the EU. “This is a defining moment for Moldova and for Europe,” European Council President Charles Michel said after a meeting with Sandu. “Russia’s war against Ukraine has caused senseless suffering and pain. And the consequences do not stop at the Ukrainian borders.”

However, breaking with decades of Russian cultural, political and economic dominance is no easy feat. Moscow has repeatedly threatened to cut Moldova off from gas supplies it has almost entirely depended on for everything from heating homes to fuelling its power plants, while putting up the prices since the start of the war, despite shrinking demand for Russian energy. Brussels has stepped in to help the struggling government balance its budget, but Sandu has been clear more support is needed.

For years, successive governments have maintained close ties with the Kremlin, positioning Chisináu as a long-standing ally. And yet, out of necessity as much as anything else, they have also pursued economic relations with the EU – not least with neighbouring Romania, which speaks the same language and is viewed as a sister nation. As a result, despite political overtures and manipulation from Moscow, the balance of trade in key industries like agriculture has switched and, apart from energy, Moldova has never been in a better place to reduce its dependence on its former imperial ruler.

And yet, there are still plenty of tools in Russia’s arsenal to try and reverse its declining influence. For most of its history since independence, top Moldovan political figures, military chiefs and officials relied on patronage, or at least informal support, from Moscow. The opposition to Sandu, led by former President Igor Dodon, has sought to frame his defeat to her in 2020 as a blow for the country’s large Russian-speaking population, taking to Kremlin media channels to accuse her of targeting their language, culture and identity. “The same thing that happened in Ukraine is happening here,” Dodon told Russian state media just a week ago.

Moscow’s increasingly bombastic Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has weighed into the row, warning Moldova against marginalising Russian speakers – despite the fact that conversations on the streets of Chisináu are more likely to be in Russian than Romanian, and there is no effort to change that. Lavrov has also cautioned Sandu not to seek to oust the 1,500 or so Russian forces stationed in Transnistria, a breakaway region along the border with Ukraine, run as a Moscow-proxy and frozen in the days of the Soviet Union. “Any action that would threaten the security of our troops would be considered under international law as an attack on Russia,” the top diplomat said.

The status of Transnistria has become a key hurdle for Sandu’s government in bolstering European integration, and an Achilles heel in what they want to present as a united front against Russia. The country’s main gas-fired powerplant is located there, and one senior Moldovan official, speaking on condition of anonymity, tells Reaction that it serves as a regional hub for Russian spies from intelligence agencies including the FSB, GRU and SVR.

Others are concerned that the Kremlin might try and leverage its influence in the country to undermine its efforts to build a new economic and political future with the West. “The risk of retribution from Moscow is high,” Vlad Lupan, the former permanent representative of Moldova to the UN, tells Reaction. “It’s no secret that Russia uses energy as a weapon of political coercion. Meanwhile, the FSB has reportedly been working with Russian-affiliated political parties and corrupt individuals in Moldova. It is clearly aiming to achieve the demise of the current government.”

Yet according to Lupan, years of being treated as a regional backwater that Moscow could push around have finally come to a head. “These realities, and the current situation in Moldova, have motivated the country to push for EU membership. We’re located behind Ukraine, which is a natural barrier between us and Russia – and now has friendly relations with Moldova.”

For almost a decade, the country has enjoyed visa-free travel with the EU, and virtually half of its citizens are believed to hold Romanian passports, giving them the opportunity to study and work abroad, often in service and agricultural jobs. Now though, with their government turning its back on Russia, many Moldovans like Lupan hope that the next generation won’t just be seeking a better future abroad, but building one at home as well.

Now though, with Moscow and the West locked in an increasingly fierce standoff since the invasion of Ukraine, the region appears to be becoming a new frontier in the Kremlin’s cloak and dagger offensive. Earlier this month, Norwegian border guards patrolling their country’s only crossing with Russia, in the Arctic county of Finnmark, detained a 50-year-old Russian citizen who was allegedly trying to enter the country with two drones and several digital storage devices. 

The incident has sparked fears that Moscow’s intelligence services are actively attempting to get access and equipment into Western nations. “It is known that we have an intelligence threat against us which has been reinforced by what is happening in Europe,” Norwegian Justice Minister Enger Mehl told journalists at the time, with analysts cautioning energy infrastructure could have been a target. Then, on Tuesday, Norway arrested an alleged Russian intelligence agent that they claim was masquerading as a Brazilian academic in the Arctic town of Tromsø.

The stings come just weeks after a series of explosions crippled the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that run under the Baltic Sea, off the coast of Sweden and Denmark. The blasts, which damaged the two sub-sea links, are believed to have been sabotage, and Western nations have pointed the finger at Russia as the culprit.

That same month, Norway announced it was stepping up security on the border, and was deploying a police helicopter to monitor the snowy region and prevent illegal crossings. In neighbouring Finland, similar steps are being put in place. “We put plans in place when tensions rise, escalating our surveillance and border checks and doing it rapidly. For us, this is business as usual even when it’s not business as usual,” Colonel Matti Pitkäniitty, of the Finnish Border Guard told me earlier this year. “There is the sense for Finns that Russia is more unpredictable than it used to be.”

Restrictions have been imposed by both countries to reduce the number of Russians able to enter, while security has been stepped up at key oil and gas sites. Oslo has turned to Germany, France and Britain for naval support in defending its offshore platforms from attacks.

Paris is concerned about the risk of sabotage after its own underwater cables were reportedly cut, shutting off internet and phone services in the South of the country last week. Meanwhile, the UK’s Shetland Islands experienced a communications blackout in September after a vital maritime cable was severed. Police Scotland have since said they believe the issue was the result of an accident, but that will do little to calm concerns about full-blown conflict playing out behind the scenes. 

Former British military intelligence officer and NATO planner, Colonel Philip Ingram, tells Reaction that the incidents are firmly part of the Kremlin’s playbook. “Asymmetrical warfare is a critical part of what they’re doing, and Nord Stream 1 and 2 are part of that,” he says.

According to Ingram, the threat of unconventional attacks is something Western leaders should be wary of. “Russia has phenomenal intelligence capabilities in Europe. When the Berlin wall came down, our intelligence agencies took their eye off the ball and moved on to counterterrorism operations, while Russia carried on with Soviet-style espionage, and has infiltrated in some cases more intelligence officers than it had during the Cold War. They’ve had years to embed and we’ve seen in poisonings of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergey Skripal just how brazenly they can operate,” the former military spook adds.

While talk of Russian spies infiltrating borders and operating behind secret identities might seem like a Soviet-era espionage scare, it is clear Moscow isn’t ruling out anything when it comes to creating economic and energy chaos in Europe. And, with countries like Norway stepping up their oil and gas production to meet the gap left by ending Russian imports, they are standing in the way of President Vladimir Putin’s plan to freeze the whole continent and weaken its support for Ukraine.

Facing defeats on the battlefield, the Kremlin is likely hoping winter will cool the conflict and give its armies time to reinforce and resupply before a Spring offensive, while also making European nations pay the price for helping Kyiv defy Putin’s territorial ambitions. But, if the West makes it through the cooler months without major issues, one of the most powerful weapons in Moscow’s arsenal will have been blunted. It seems to be falling to the legions of spies now, said to be doing their work in the Arctic Circle, to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

That was more than seven months ago and, while tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have died as a result of President Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions, the war is seemingly a long way from over. But, with a summer of unseasonably hot weather fading away, much of Europe may now face the full consequences of the invasion for the first time. 

As the West scrambles to divest from Russian fossil fuels imports after decades of reliance, choking off funding for the Kremlin’s brutal war, the worsening energy crisis is coming to a head at the same moment ordinary people go to turn on the heating. Meanwhile, the rising cost of fuel is driving economic chaos across the continent, and threatens to throw more than a dozen developed nations into a prolonged downturn.

Investors and analysts are now warning that Europe will slump into a recession by the fourth quarter of this year, with slim prospects for recovery any time soon. Meanwhile, Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, has cautioned that the bloc’s members are struggling to deal with the value of their currencies slipping against the US dollar. “Everybody is running to increase interest rates,” he said earlier this month, adding that “this will bring us to a world recession.”

Other signs are also looking glum. European firms are reportedly planning to boost workers’ pay-packets to help them match the rising cost of food and fuel over the winter, and many have announced one-off payments to ensure their staff don’t go cold or hungry, while UK retailers have introduced a series of wage rises. The resulting inflationary pressure and the slimmer profit margins, analysts tell Reuters, could throw Europe’s private sector into disarray.

Germany, the continent’s largest economy, is also predicted to be heading towards a recession and economists say the two consecutive quarters of negative growth could come by early next year. 

Having boomed for decades on the back of cheap Russian oil and gas, it has been hit the hardest by the sudden shutoff, with its heavy industry bearing the brunt. Vital manufacturing sectors are being hit hardest – for example, the colossal BASF chemical plant in Southern Germany saw its energy bill rise by £687 million in the first four months since the war started.

Now, with the underwater Nord Stream natural gas pipeline having been put out of commission by a series of blasts earlier this month, the cost of buying from alternative sources is on the rise. In an effort to bail out businesses, Berlin has unveiled €200 billion in energy support funds. However, other European nations warn that its cash injection will drive up prices and throw other states into economic turmoil. 

Those objections, though, have fallen on deaf ears while the country races to avoid winter blackouts and energy shortages. “If Germany were to experience a really deep recession, it would drag the whole of Europe down with it,” Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck said last week in response to the criticism. “We’re not being selfish — we’re trying to stabilise an economy at the heart of Europe.” Even that rescue package may not be enough, and the demand for firewood is soaring as consumers fear sky-high energy bills.

While the UK has never been anywhere near as dependent on Russian oil and gas, and has relatively secure supply chains, the resulting pressure on alternative providers is driving up costs. Embattled new British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has seen her flagship energy policy – freezing bills at £2,500 a year for two years – scrapped, and replaced with a commitment to maintain those levels only until April, with concerns about the overall cost of the plan in the context of a market meltdown.

In Russia, meanwhile, temperatures are already dropping and locals say a grey, damp winter is on its way. While they may have plenty of energy to burn, the revenues Moscow once used to enrich its elite and fund its armed forces are no longer there. Instead, those unlucky enough to be drafted to the front lines in Ukraine face months freezing in a foxhole ahead, as their better-motivated, better-armed and better-trained foes push them back to the border.

The invasion has ultimately achieved little of what Putin might have hoped for – destroying Moscow’s reputation as a great power rather than cementing it, and putting himself in an increasingly vulnerable position at home. But, showing no signs of giving up, the increasingly dictatorial Russian President may well settle for watching Europe slip into economic chaos in whatever time he has left in power.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life